Spectator
by Ninja Delivery Girl
Summary: For years, Dara believed that the worst thing that could happen to her would be getting reaped. Now, she knows differently - because it is her sister, Willow, entering the Hunger Games, and Dara has no choice but to watch.


Willow is sitting on the front step of our little wooden hut when I step out of the house in the morning. She holds a mug of steaming tea in her gloved hands. The steam rises up high into the air, an unusual sight of warmth in the cold and frosty town. The winter has clung on grimly this year, and the cold has stayed longer than it should.

The trees are dying.

I sit next to her and we silently wait for the sun together. I don't know where Willow has been, but she is dressed in our father's jacket and she is wearing her leather work boots. She has probably been out poaching again, or gathering food from the dying trees of the orchard, and I hate her for throwing herself in harm's way to get us food that we don't need, not really. If I had to choose between three meals a day and having my older sister alive and healthy, I know what I would choose.

Maybe she senses my disapproval, because she reaches down underneath the wooden step of the porch to haul up her canvas bag that is full of fruit and berries. "For the reaping day feast," she says quietly. I can only look at her in silence. She didn't have to do this; she didn't have to go and put her life in danger just to gather food for a stupid meal, but she did anyway. I touch her hand in silence.

"Thank you," I say, and then I reach into the bag to snatch up a few berries. "You know strawberries are my favourite!" I'm trying to cheer her up, because I hate the silent gloom that has descended upon her. Willow is meant to be the _alive_ one of the family. If anyone is going to be quiet and reserved, then it is going to be me.

She laughs as I throw them into the air and catch them between my teeth. "They're Gideon and Rowan's favourites too, so don't eat them all." She shuts the bag again and stows it underneath the porch again. The sun is slowly approaching over the horizon, and Willow squints into the glare with a sigh.

"I suppose we should get ready for the reaping."

"You'll be fine," she tells me. "How many times do you have your name in this time, two?" She and Rowan refuse to allow me to get tessarae. I'm secretly glad for that, not to have my name in as many times as them, but I hate it that they see me as the younger, weaker sibling to be protected.

_Maybe because you are._

"Three," I say.

She stands up and knocks the snow from her boots. "You'll be fine, Dara. Your name is only in there about one hundredth the amount of times mine is." She laughs. "If anyone should be worried, it should be me."

I doubt that. Even if she were reaped, Willow is strong and brave and she's just so alive that I can't imagine her doing anything but winning. She's like the glow that brightens our entire family, the only one who keeps us from sinking into despair. She's smart and she's resourceful, she's beautiful and she's charming, and she can throw an axe like no one else. If she were reaped, there is no doubt in my mind that Willow would find a way to win.

She has no reason to be worried.

The door slams shut behind me and I stay outside, digging the toes of my boots into the snow that has accumulated in front of our porch. Our little wooden house is about a mile away from the rest of the town; our neighbours are few and far in between. It is lonely at times, but right now the silence is beautiful. I can see for miles around, right down into the centre of our district and beyond that to the forestry and the orchards and the houses down below with firewood neatly stacked outside their houses. It is almost easy to believe that today is the same as any other.

Willow is lucky in one way. This year is her last reaping. It is only my second. I have another five years to go before I am safe.

It is almost eight o'clock by the time that Gideon arrives. He is my brother Rowan's best friend, and he has come to help us carry Rowan to the square. Rowan is sick, deathly sick, but the symptoms are subtle and we know that if the Peacekeepers came for him that they would not believe our excuses.

I am waiting outside for him when he does arrive, carrying a stretcher.

"How is he?"  
"Worse," I say. We cannot afford any medicine for him, and so every day he just deteriorates and deteriorates until he is more of a skeleton than a person, barely able to move or talk. This latest harsh winter has not been kind to him.

I stand up and open the door and Gideon follows me inside. Willow greets him cheerfully from her position at the kitchen table, where she is fixing a broken axe. Even Rowan manages a smile and a hoarse greeting as Gideon crouches beside him to talk. I slip quietly away into the back room. Willow has laid out a dress for me. I'm not pretty enough to carry off dresses like she can, but I slip it on anyway and shove my hair back from my face in a token effort to clean up. My face is still bruised and cut from a fall I took the previous day. There is nothing I can do about that.

I wash my face and my hands in the cold water Willow has drawn for us, and I sit down at the kitchen table to allow her to try and do something with my hair. It is as thick as hers, but she has hers under control. Mine is tangled and matted, and the majority of the time I hide it under a woollen hat. She ties it up swiftly in a rough braid that she loops and pins into a low knot at the nape of my neck. "Smile," she whispers in my ear.

I smile.

I wear my boots underneath the dress, although I know that I really shouldn't. Willow says nothing as we walk out of the house, but I see a small smile at the corner of her lips. She and Gideon carry Rowan easily between them, and I trail behind with our dog, Kezia. The hill down from our house to the square is treacherous in the ice, but all of us manage not to slip. I suppose that is one of the perks of working in the forestry all through the hard winter.

The majority of the people of the district have assembled in the square for the reaping, and Willow and I have to leave the boys in order to sign in. Gideon and Avoy are both above reaping age. In fact, Gideon is usually one of the bookies running bets on the reapings. Before last year, I used to help him collect the bets and to write down who had bet what on who. It had been fun, but now I cannot escape the fact that they will be betting on me.

We leave Kezia behind at the edge of the square and we go to sign in. Once there, we are ushered off to our separate spaces; Willow to the eighteen year old girl's section, and I to the thirteen year old girl's section. There are a few people here that I recognize from school, when I bother to go, and we exchange nervous nods and a few shaky greetings. We do not yet possess the casual, confidence façade of the sixteen years olds and the seventeen years olds, who joke and laugh together, making fun of the escort or the victors or the reapings themselves.

The escort is a small, squat man with dark skin and very white teeth, who bounces on his toes and high heels around the stage. His name is Set Libertine, and he comes to us from District 4. He is not as strange or extravagant as many of the other escorts that we see on the television, but he is possessed of a strangely sunny and optimistic outlook and a perpetual smile. I suppose that we could have been landed with worse, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

"Hello!" he chirps into the microphone, and everyone winces at the squeal of feedback that bounces around the square. "Hello, hello, hello to all of District 7! Welcome to the seventy first annual Hunger Games… and my, what a Hunger Games we have ready and waiting for you! May I introduce our mayor, Daphne Linden, and our previous victors, Harrelson Perry and Johanna Mason!" There is a little applause from those at the deg of the square, those who are not participating in the reaping. The Peacekeepers stand silently amongst us.

"I have a little movie to show you all," Set says cheerfully. "And then we'll get right down to the wonderful business of the reaping! So please, enjoy!"

The screens on either side of him flicker into life and the seal of the Capitol appears. The movie is the same as it was all the years before, and I don't see the need to focus on it again for a fifth or sixth time. It only takes a few short minutes, and then the focus is back onto Set as he bounces across to the right hand side of the stage. His high heels clicking and clacking on the stage are the only sounds audible in the square. Everyone is waiting with bated breath, and my heart is pounding.

I search the square for Willow. She smiles back at me and mouths _you'll be fine._

"And please," Set says. "May the odds be _ever_ in your favour."

He puts his hand in amongst the girl's names. Swirls them around. Picks one up and discards it without looking at it. He is making a show of this. He picks one up. Pulls it away from the rest and makes his way back across the stage to the microphone.

He unfolds it. "Our female tribute, ladies and gentlemen, is…"

_Dara Laverne._

Only that's not what he says. He says Laverne, but the first name is very different.

"Our female tribute is Willow Laverne."


End file.
